The poverty of the crofter often renders his condition deplorable. His holding and right of common have been curtailed by the landlord, or he has sub-divided them among his sons or kinsmen, until it would be impossible for the produce of the soil to sustain the population, even if no rent whatever were charged. Some years ago he was able to increase his income by gathering sea-weed for kelp; but latterly, since iodine can be obtained more cheaply from other sources, the demand for this product has ceased. In some places the fishing is valuable, enabling him to supply his family with food for a part of the year, and bringing him money besides. He is, however, often too poor to provide the necessary boats and nets, while in many places the absence of good harbors and landings is a most serious drawback to the fishing industry. Sometimes he supplements his income by spending a few months of the year in the low country and obtaining work there. In most cases, however, a large part of his income must be derived from the land. If there were plenty of employment to be had, the little holding would do very well as a garden, and the stock which he could keep on the common would add greatly to his comfort. As things now are, he must look chiefly to the land both for his subsistence and his rent, and, with an unfruitful soil and an unfriendly climate, he is often on the verge of want. Still more wretched is the condition of the cottars and squatters. The latter are in some places numerous and have taken up considerable portions of land formerly used as common, thus interfering with the rights of the crofters. They appropriate land and possess and pasture stock, but pay no rent, obey no control, and scarcely recognize any authority. The dwellings of this class and of some of the poorer crofters are wretched in the extreme. A single apartment, with walls of stone and mud, a floor of clay, a thatched roof, no windows, no chimney, one low door furnishing an entrance for the occupants and a means of ventilation and of escape for the smoke which rolls up black and thick from the peat fire, furniture of the rudest imaginable sort, the inhabitants--the human beings, the cows, the pigs, the sheep, and the poultry--all crowded together in the miserable and filthy hut, make up a picture which the most romantic and poetic associations can hardly render pleasing to one accustomed to the comforts and refinements of modern civilization. Of course many of the crofters live in greater comfort, and some of the cottages are by no means unattractive. But the Royal Commissioners say that the crofter's habitation is usually "of a character that would imply physical and moral degradation in the eyes of those who do not know how much decency, courtesy, virtue, and even refinement survive amidst the sordid surroundings of a Highland hovel." An Englishman who, on seeing these "sordid surroundings," was disposed to compare the social and moral condition of the people to "the